A run ‘n gun filmmaker’s POV on the business and creative world of new media and web tv

Week 8 In Review – The Hayley Project

As expected, traffic slowed down over the long weekend. Taking a short break and putting up the recap episode was probably the smart thing to do

Viewers seem to respond positively to the “shout outs” that Hayley gave her supporters in the recap episode. These small interactive elements can go a long way in enhancing the experience

To re-engage subscribers, we will likely share the recap episode sometime today, before we go back on schedule tomorrow

Jato and I had to juggle the release schedule to break at an appropriate time for XMas/New Year. I think story flow won’t be a problem but we had a discussion to make sure that we weren’t unnecessarily moving parts around

Finally, a good article by Fred Wilson around how digital impacts traditional business models. You can read it here. Basically, the key takeaway is that with no/low marginal costs, traditional business models are going to breakdown in the digital space. So when you think about online video, expectation of $20 television-level CPMs are probably unrealistic, especially as more and more video content hits the web. If nothing else, this oversupply should bring downward pressure on CPMs. I had said before that The Hayley Project was more of a loss leader for the future, with little thought of generating profits today. Even though we’ve been accepted into youtube’s partner program, we haven’t even turned on advertising for our episodes. I have heard that youtube CPMs are fairly low (e.g., $5), so it doesn’t seem to make sense at this point to try and monetize our relatively small viewership. Regardless of low CPMs, indie filmmakers are still going to generate huge amounts of content, as the web is still a superior distribution alternative to traditional channels for most producers